Drake accuses Spotify, UMG of artificially inflating streams of Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" in court filing
CBSN
Rapper Drake's company Frozen Moments filed a petition in a New York court Monday accusing the streaming service Spotify and Universal Music Group of conspiring to inflate the streams of Kendrick Lamar's hit diss track "Not Like Us."
"Not Like Us," the result of Lamar and Drake's weekslong beef, broke records on the Billboard rap charts, retaining the top spot all summer. Frozen Moments, described in the filing as "an entity wholly owned by Drake," alleges that UMG "launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves" with "Not Like Us" via bots and pay-for-play agreements.
The filing alleges the song was licensed to Spotify at a 30% discount in exchange for a boost in recommendations to users — the track now has over 900 million streams on Spotify, according to the service. The petition also alleges UMG used bots to drive up the streams on "Not Like Us," paid radio promoters to increase air play and even paid tech giant Apple to have its voice assistant Siri misdirect users to Lamar's hit song.
